Tackling loneliness and isolation is just one of the ways in which we are aiming to reduce health and social inequalities in Walsall.
Here, Connie Jennings Head of Health and Well-Being at whg, talks about the Kindness Counts initiative being delivered by whg as part of the Walsall Together resilient communities work.
“While the past year’s pandemic has presented a multitude of challenges for housing providers and their residents, at whg it has also provided us with greater insight into some of the serious issues facing our customers.
The wider social and economic impact of Covid-19 has taken its toll on individuals and families, exacerbating health inequalities that already existed in some of our more deprived communities.
Along with fellow housing providers across the country, we stepped up our support for customers over the last year. This included practical help in the form of food hampers and medication collection, along with emotional support such as weekly calls to check on people’s welfare.
Our teams rang 8,000 customers during lockdown, which revealed that around 2,500 felt lonely or isolated. Most of them said they were only ‘just about managing’ before social restrictions were introduced, but were now finding day-to-day life extremely difficult.
This discovery tallies with the national estimate that a third of adults feel lonely. Affecting people of all ages, loneliness and isolation are key public health issues – as bad for you as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It can lead to poor physical and mental health, and even premature death.
Contrary to popular belief loneliness and isolation affects both young and older people and is more likely during significant life events such as bereavement, becoming a new parent or moving into your first home.
Time for action
Uncovering the scale of this hidden problem among our customers has prompted us to launch an innovative response, our new ‘Kindness Counts’ initiative. This initiative is being delivered in partnership through Walsall Together.
To deliver this programme and support those who feel alone, we are recruiting four ‘Kindness Champions’. These are whg customers who are effectively experts in such matters due to their own life experience and ability to engage with, and win the trust of, people within their community.
These champions will run a range of activities to boost confidence, self-esteem and opportunities for social contact. This will include a befriending service, bringing young people together through gaming, developing inter-generational support networks and reaching out to people who are carers but who may struggle to address their own needs.
By engaging with hard-to-reach disadvantaged individuals, Kindness Counts is part of our ongoing work with partner organisations to support the building of resilient communities, reducing health and social inequalities to improve outcomes for our residents.
Through this new scheme, we aim to support around 1,000 people over the next two years.
As well as the positive impact on our customers and communities, its preventative approach should help ease the strain on health and social care by reducing the need for acute services further down the line.”
